On Thursday, December 5, I had the honor of personalizing 250 pairs of Keds Champion sneakers at a B.A.B.E. (Bad Ass Business Executives) event with two of Keds’ female-centric marketing messages: “Women Made” and “Modern Woman.” Did you know that these classic shoes have been designed for women for over 100 years? The Keds website states, “Our goal was and still is to empower women to be who they want to be and go where they want to go.”
One of the best pieces of history I’ve discovered about Keds is this photo of the original canvas-topped, rubber-soled Champion, which became the definition of the “sneaker.” Why “sneaker?” Well I’m guessing it’s because rubber soles would not have clicked as audibly as high-heeled shoes of the time would have, and the canvas tops allowed women more freedom of movement. You can see the shape of today’s Champion in the vamp and upper of the 1916 boot/shoe/sneaker regardless of the stacked heel.
For me personally, Keds has been a very meaningful brand ever since I was a child, because my well-dressed grandmother (after whom I was named) always wore Keds Champions when she wasn’t in dress shoes or burgundy penny loafers. I can still picture her in Keds while she was gardening, riding a bicycle, doing laundry, or going to the community pool. Anytime my grandma was active, she wore her Keds.
When I shared this memory of my chic grandmother with Jessica Gold, PR and Events Manager at Keds, she remarked that Keds are like “the little black dress of footwear.” That’s the best description I’ve ever heard of the iconic Champion, and it’s true: pair them with dolphin shorts or wear them with a gown, they are as elegant as they are athletic.
My own love affair with Keds began in grade school, when the early 80’s ushered in prairie style and leg warmers. We also wore Keds with our Catholic school uniforms and with warm-up clothes on the way to dancing school. Then when Dirty Dancing hit the screens, we all wanted to be Baby… denim cutoffs, tank tops and Keds. Once Taylor Swift became a brand ambassador, my daughter and her generation fell in love. And so it goes.
Keds are – literally and figuratively -- a blank canvas: they are quiet and gracious enough to let you be the star, painting your own self-portrait onto them. For me, great style means never regretting your style choices years or even decades down the line. It means looking at a photo and being unable to pinpoint the decade in which the photo was taken, or asking yourself whether or not Jackie O. would approve of your sartorial choices. It means choosing footwear like Keds.
